Agile Quality Patterns

As organizations transition to agile processes, Quality Assurance (QA) activities and roles need to evolve. Traditionally, QA activities have occurred late in the process, after the software is fully functioning. As a consequence, QA departments have been “quality gatekeepers” rather than actively engaged in the ongoing development and delivery of quality software. Agile teams incrementally deliver working software. Incremental delivery provides an opportunity to engage in QA activities much earlier, ensuring that both functionality and important system qualities are addressed just in time, rather than too late. Agile teams embrace a “whole team” approach. Even though special skills may be required to perform certain development and Quality Assurance tasks, everyone on the team is focused on the delivery of quality software. This paper outlines 24 patterns for transitioning from a traditional QA practice to a more agile process. Six of the patterns are completely presented that focus on where quality is addressed earlier in the process and QA plays a more integral role.

As organizations transition to agile processes, Quality Assurance (QA) activities and roles need to evolve. Traditionally, QA activities occur late in the process, after the software is fully functioning. As a consequence, QA departments have been “quality gatekeepers” rather than actively engaged in the ongoing development and delivery of quality software. Agile teams incrementally deliver working software. Incremental delivery provides an opportunity to engage in QA activities much earlier, ensuring that both functionality and important system qualities are addressed just in time, rather than too late. Agile teams embrace a “whole team” approach. Even though special skills may be required to perform certain development and Quality Assurance tasks, everyone on the team is focused on the delivery of quality software. The patterns in this paper are focused on “breaking down the walls” or removing barriers between people and traditional roles, as this is key for any change within an organization that is transitioning to being more Agile at Quality

As organizations transition to agile processes, Quality Assurance (QA) activities and roles need to evolve. Traditionally, QA activities occur late in the process, after the software is fully functioning. As a consequence, QA departments have been “quality gatekeepers” rather than actively engaged in the ongoing development and delivery of quality software. Agile teams incrementally deliver working software. Incremental delivery provides an opportunity to engage in QA activities much earlier, ensuring that both functionality and important system qualities are addressed just in time, rather than too late. Agile teams embrace a “whole team” approach. Even though special skills may be required to perform certain development and Quality Assurance tasks, everyone on the team is focused on the delivery of quality software. This paper is part two of a series of patterns about Agile QA practices and activities. The patterns in this paper are focused primarily on measuring and monitoring system qualities.

As organizations transition to agile processes, Quality Assurance (QA) activities and attention to system quality need to evolve along with the evolution of development practices. Agile quality teams incrementally deliver working software while ensuring that important system qualities are also addressed. In order to pay appropriate attention to system qualities, they need to be visible and included as part of the prioritized work. This paper presents patterns for identifying system qualities and including them on the project roadmap, adding quality-related work items to the project backlog, and creating a quality radiator that communicates the status and goals for delivering system qualities.

As organizations transition to agile processes, Quality Assurance (QA) activities and roles evolve. The whole team focuses on quality as they incrementally deliver working software. Incremental delivery provides an opportunity to engage in QA activities much earlier, ensuring that both functionality and system qualities are focused on just in time, rather than too late. Knowing what and when specific qualities need to be paid attention to and checking that they have been appropriately addressed is important. The patterns in this paper extend our previous work with three patterns aimed at increasing quality awareness and expertise: “Quality Checklists,” the “Product Quality Champion,” and “Shadow the Quality Expert.”

To achieve quality systems and products, it is vital to enable and infuse quality work throughout the entire process, rather than piling it on at the end. Thus paying attention to when to this, how to do this, and who is involved can increase quality. This paper presents three patterns from the collection of patterns on being agile at quality: System Quality Specialist, Spread the Quality Workload, and Automate As You Go. System Quality Specialists can define, test, and implement system-quality characteristics that are complex or require specialized skills and expertise to get right. Spreading the Quality Workload throughout the development process keeps the team from being overly burdened with quality-related work at any point in time. If you Automate As You Go, this enables teams to streamline their build and testing processes, eliminate tedious or mundane tasks, and allow more time for team members to focus on implementing and testing important system qualities.

The complete collection of patterns about transitioning to agile quality described in pattern gist form. A pattern gist is a brief version of the fuller pattern description. The gist motivates the pattern, poses a question about the problem the pattern addresses, and then sketches the pattern solution.